Posts Tagged ‘violet’

In the violet depths of some mysterious sea, light filters down to find shining octopuses, waving tentacle fronds, and frolicking jellyfish.

Ultraviolet is the Pantone color of the year, and somehow the word seemed to fit this mix of vivid purples and shining metallics. There’s a sense of more going on than the eye can see, life just around the corner of vision.

What lies deep in these oceans?

Deep Ultraviolet, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see the iridescent blue and duochrome mauve highlights on the floating jellies. Below, this art is in a temporary frame, waiting to bring its gorgeous mystery into your beautiful home.

Another painting in my Aglow series, this one hearkening back to Carl Sagan again.

The space is black and blue and violet, lit with the big glow of some celestial body and scattered with the smaller glow of stars, or possibly stardust. The firefly-dots are in interference blue, so they catch the light to twinkle and shimmer.

There are hidden stars in the white, too, which shine only at the right angle.

This delicately monochrome abstract watercolor is full of tiny textural details that come together to form a larger flow, like a map of a river’s course.

The colors range from deep purple to pale periwinkle, with a matte softness to the lighter areas that helps distinguish them from the shine of the darker ones. There’s little splashes outside of the uneven, painterly border, which add a touch of whimsy. The color is represented most accurately in the framed photo.

This painting is very meditative, something you can use to calm your mind for a few minutes when it’s racing too much to get into flow with your own work or art.

Patterns of Flow, 8″x8″ Japanese watercolor on Fluid watercolor paper.

Patterns of Flow, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see a close-up of the soft, chalky surface of the painting and the mesmerizing details hiding in the color. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, just waiting to bring some beauty to your wall.

Beautiful, richly layered color and shine make this painting live up to its name. There’s really only 2 colors each of normal watercolor, shiny watercolor, and glitter gel pen, but their interactions create an amazing level of fractal detail and variety of shades from blue to violet.

This painting would bring a gorgeous pop of color to an otherwise drab office or wall.

Above, you can see a hint of the glitter pen hiding in the paint, blue lines and purple spirals floating atop the color. Below, you can see the piece in a frame, bright and beautiful against the black.

A violet night sky is peppered with the texture of stars. Shimmering halos surround these rocky meteors as they descend through that peaceful sky, trailing glittering fire behind them. There’s red and green and lavender and some hints of blue and brown and gold. The sunlight changes everything, and a closer look shows shining crystals jutting up off the page, intruding into the third dimension.

This painting took a lot of fits and starts and several different forms before I was happy with this final work. All of the pieces work in harmony to tell a visual story, instead of fighting to find meaning between them.

Descent, 7″x5″ salt, watercolor, and duochrome watercolor on paper.

Descent, detail, by Amy Crook

Above, you can see a close-up of some of the meteors, see the rich red and shimmery green, and the lavender halos lighting up against the violet sky. Below, you can see the painting all tucked into a frame, protected from the elements and ready to grace your wall, desk, or shelf.

This dark, intense bluish-violet wash was just asking for tentacles, but after I’d scribbled in the first one it seemed like that was really enough. I just really like something about the way the single, lone tentacle reaches upward toward the light, silhouetted against the violet depths.

Above, you can see the shading detail on the tentacle, the textures of paper and paint that give the piece a murky, atmospheric feel. I liked this shot so much, I’m using it as a wallpaper, in fact. Below, you can see it temporarily tucked into a 8″x10″ frame, hanging out with my iPhone for scale.

One more example of all the tiny spirals, this one with a few purple spirals sneaking in among the blue just to switch things up. The planet itself is a rich, grapey purple with some splashes of lighter periwinkle as highlights. The black space around it has quite a mysterious, almost wormhole-like texture to it, swirling around the planet’s inexorable gravity.

Filigree Planet 2, 7″x5″ watercolor and glitter gel pen on paper.

Filigree Planet 2, detail, by Amy Crook

I love the way the light shimmers off these glittery pens, but they fade to near-invisibility at other angles and distances. I even made you, well, okay, I made myself a computer wallpaper off of the detail shot above, but you can use it, too. Below, you can see the piece tucked into a black frame, reflecting serenely in my iPhone (as usual, it’s not included, heh).

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